This three-vehicle accident Tuesday afternoon just as the afternoon rush started in Walker caused backups at Wilson Avenue and Remembrance Road in all directions for more than an hour.
By Chuck Deshaine|Mlive

The Michigan Department of Transportation unveiled a plan Monday night that would redesign the misaligned intersection of Wilson Avenue and
Remembrance Road in Walker.

The plan calls for the current intersection to be
removed and a 180-foot diameter roundabout built in its place.

Construction is expected to begin in June of 2015 and last for up to six months.

The redesign can't come quick enough for Walker City Commissioner Charles Deschaine, who was at the intersection Tuesday shortly after a multi-vehicle accident clogged up the intersection for more than an hour. "Thankfully no one was hurt but this is the reason we need to build a roundabout here," Deschaine said.

Redesigning the intersection has been in the works for several years as MDOT and city engineers looked at rebuilding the odd-angle intersection to increase safety and traffic flow.

City officials and MDOT engineers say replacing the current intersection with a roundabout is the best
solution for what Greg Long, Walker deputy director of policing, called "a very
dangerous intersection." "It's not the number of accidents that is concerning as it is the type of accidents that happen," he said. Since 2007 there have been 64 accidents at the intersection, but Long said the department's statistics don't show how many fatalities or serious injuries there have been.

However Long said when
accidents occur there, they are often severe.

Consultants for the Michigan Department
of Transportation say there has been a lot of research done on roundabouts
across the country and in Michigan over the last 10 years. The research shows
there are fewer accidents and what accidents do occur are less severe. "What the data shows in all of these studies, is that the
roundabout takes away the possibility of a head-on collision and T-bone
accidents," said Wesley Butch, roundabout consultant with DLZ Engineering, of
Lansing. "What accidents that do happen, end up being sideswipes and other
minor accidents that occur at low speed."

Erick Kind, manager of transportation services for the Grand
Rapids Service Center with the Michigan Department of Transportation, said he
expects construction to start in the spring on 2015 and be completed by the end
of the 2015 construction season.

Kinde said the intersection was to have been ungraded in 2015
by MDOT. As engineers and consultants looked at the intersection, it
became clear that adding lanes and additional left-turn signals to ease
congestion was not the answer.

The roundabout will not only reduce accidents, but more quickly ease
rush-hour congestion, Butch said.

Computer modeling programs used to design the intersection
show that wait times at the intersection -- even at the busiest times of the day
-- will drop from several minutes as they are now to less than 10 seconds. "Our
models indicate that in the morning rush, wait times will be less than five
seconds and in the evening perhaps seven seconds or less," Butch added.

MDOT will be building the roundabout as part of a larger project which will see Wilson Avenue resurfaced from Lake Michigan Drive to Remembrance Road. The total cost of the project is $5.8 million with the city of Walker picking up about $707,000 of the total. Working
with the Grand Valley Metro Council, Walker has secured a $400,000 Congestion
Mitigation Air Quality grant to help offset Walker's portion of the cost.

Preliminary designs call for the roundabout to be built
slightly northeast of the current intersection which would allow for the four
legs of the intersection to be better aligned.

Kinde said they expect to be able to keep at least one lane in
each direction open during the construction.

Walker City Manager Cathy Vander Meulen said the roundabout
will add a gateway to the area, improve the street infrastructure, and
hopefully be an incentive for more private investment in the area.

Walker City Engineer Scott Conners said in the next few months, his office will be working to educate the public as to how to use the roundabout before it opens. City Commissioner Dan Kent said there is one easy rule when using a roundabout. "If there is no one to your left, you are free to enter. If there is, then you have to wait."